IT’S THE WAY HIS PROSE wraps me up like an amorous and itchy octopus. It’s the slow building of his narratives. It’s his quaint and dark sense of humor. It’s his search for literary identity (“There are my ‘Poe pieces’ and my ‘Dunsany pieces’ — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?”). It’s his backward politics, which he eventually awoke from. (It’s also that he awoke from his antisemitism.) It’s his sense of atmosphere. It’s his malign genius. It’s the joy he took in corresponding with budding horror writers. It’s his love of cats. It’s his love of cheese (“How can anybody not like CHEESE?”).
Death steals everything except our stories.”
— Jim Harrison
Truth v. Lies
SOME TIME AGO, I HAD a Facebook encounter with a dear friend who’s something of an Evangelical Atheist. It all started when another dear friend posted the following “meme” to my “wall:”
OMNISM: THE BELIEF THAT NO RELIGION IS THE ONLY TRUTH, BUT THAT TRUTHS ARE FOUND IN THEM ALL.
To which my atheist friend replied:
Alas, some lies, too. And little explanation of how to sift one from the other.
Metaphoraging Roundup: 2018
IF A GOOD FRIEND HADN’T died this year and cured me of a years-long writer’s block, I wouldn’t be posting this.
But he did, so I am, proffering 2018’s Top 10 Viewed Pages and Posts at this writing:
1. Home page / Archives: (683 views) marks people who have happened by from seeing my URL posted in various places (including email .sigs, business cards, our local radio station and Facebook), and/or those exploring more than the seven posts visible on each “page.”
2. Fie on Death, and the Pale Horse He Rode In On (180) is John Wheeler’s cyber-eulogy, its link posted in numerous online fora where his friends could see it.
“Same To You” Redux
SOME YEARS AGO, I POSTED about a stress-free method for dealing with people who wish you a happy holiday-outside-your-affinity-group. In that spirit, I proffer it again for anyone who, like me, neither celebrates Xmas nor wishes ill on anyone who does. May the appropriate winter light-celebration exceed your expectations, and be filled with more joy than you know what to do with.
AMERICA IS A PLACE WHERE Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas.”
— John Burton Brimer
Words To Bring Back: “Trenchant”
– Definition: adj. 1. vigorous or incisive in expression or style. 2. sharply perceptive
– Used in a sentence: What we need is more trenchant male characters, unlike Peter Jackson’s Aragorn or the ubiquitous “Bumbling Dad.”.
– Why: These are not timid times, and our language should reflect that. It shouldn’t go so far in that direction as to become self-parodying, but I think it’s important to “stand for” something — and to understand as well.